


Never Gonna Give You Up

by Shen_Gong_Oops



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Angst, F/F, Harper and Monty have a chronic illness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23272018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shen_Gong_Oops/pseuds/Shen_Gong_Oops
Summary: Unknown:Hey, Monty guilted me into a road trip with those damned puppy dog eyes and seeing as neither of you can be in the same car, I am your road trip Uber. Name's Raven.Harper:Rookie mistake, you never look Monty in the eyes. That's how you lose.A road trip, huh?
Relationships: Harper McIntyre/Raven Reyes, Monty Green/Jasper Jordan, past Monty Green/Harper McIntyre
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chopped Madness





	Never Gonna Give You Up

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't the faintest idea how to write angst. 
> 
> Lowkey inspired by the movie _Five Feet Apart_ and by the fact my favorite coworker needs a lung transplant.

Back when they were children locked away in separate hospital rooms, they often dreamt up traveling cross country. Slipping notes onto med-carts as the nurses made their rounds or sending scribbles to each other via their Nintendo DS chat. Conversations became eons easier when Hannah Green finally allowed her son to have a cell phone. Visions of the pair crammed in her parents' old sedan, blasting cringy pop music for hours on end and stopping at odd eateries along the way. In every fantasy, they could finally be within arm's length of one another.

Too bad that dream could never be a reality.

Or at least, she figured it would remain a fantasy. Monty spent three months hospitalized and she… she's no longer on the list. Not that he knew that. It had been five days since Dr. Tsing sat with her, explaining their options and their path forward. But nothing from that dreaded appointment settled yet. Unopened pamphlets littered her coffee table hidden under an empty bottle of Jack.

Laying on her couch nursing the worst hangover in existence, she hadn't expected to receive a text telling her to go outside. Preferably with pants on.

Grumbling about Monty not telling her what to do, she miraculously pulled herself to the front window. Jasper's roofless lime green Jeep half on the curb and a slick refurbished Impala parked like a normal human being in possession of a license in her driveway.

"Get in loser we're going shopping!" Monty called from the passenger seat. "Well not this car cause six feet and all that. That's why we bribed Raven into coming with us!" He pointed at the Impala.

"Grab your shit, we disembark in five!" Jasper hollered, thrusting his fists into the air.

Her phone buzzed, glancing down at the screen she saw a text came through from an unknown number.

**Unknown** : Hey, Monty guilted me into a road trip with those damned puppy dog eyes and seeing as neither of you can be in the same car, I am your road trip Uber. Name's Raven.

**Harper** : Rookie mistake, you never look Monty in the eyes. That's how you lose.

A road trip, huh?

* * *

_Track: Take Me Home, Country Roads_

The map scribbled onto a colored piece of construction paper brought tears to her eyes. A plan they concocted at ten years old when an infection of her G-Tube left Harper fearing the worst. Monty made a list of all the places they'd go together - the first few places being theme parks like Disneyworld and Universal Studios. Then there was going to New York to eat the biggest slice of pizza they could find or going to St. Louis to climb the Arch. The pair sliding the construction paper under her door, taking turns drawing a trail spanning from Portland to Portland. 

In her hands was that same map.

"Monty and Jasper said this was years in the making," Raven said, trying to coax Harper into a conversation.

It was odd being in a vehicle with someone she knew abstractly. Raven went to the same university as Monty; she and Jasper part of Monty's normal, everyday life while Harper was part of his sick life. The life where he was confined to a hospital room. These two worlds were never meant to meet, yet here they were.

"In our minds Monty and I drove around in the same car but that will never happen." Even if they both had a new set of functioning lungs, they would still have to keep their distance.

Raven plugged her phone into the AUX cable. "Jasper made an _amazing_ road trip playlist that I was forced to download and we're mandated to listen to during this adventure."

"Sounds about right."

Smirking at her, Raven tapped the screen of her phone a few times. The green Spotify symboling lighting up the screen. She feared how many times Rick Astley's voice would croon through the speakers. She received a slew of texts the night Jasper changed the playlist for their high school freshman year dance. _Never Gonna Give You Up_ playing ten times throughout the evening.

"How’d Monty guilt you into this?” Harper asked, placing the hand-drawn map safely into the side pocket of her suitcase.

Pulling out of the driveway, Raven sent her a wink. “Sorry, I don’t put out personal information like that on the first date.” 

Alright, here they go.

* * *

_Track: Good Vibrations_

Their first real stop - that wasn't because Jasper had to pee or one of them needed gas - was Boston. Raven’s leg stiffened about fifty miles out. The woman switching to the passenger seat in a vain attempt to stretch out the strained muscles. None of them had any real rhyme or reason to be in Boston besides the fact Raven needed out of the Impala for an indeterminable amount of time. The woman repeatedly stated she was fine but Harper saw through her lie, the uncomfortableness etched onto her features. So instead Harper called Monty, stating Harper was in the beginning stages of rigor mortis and needed to pull over for a bit. 

“You didn’t have to do that, I’m fine.”

Pulling into a small parking lot, Harper turned to face the other, “I don’t care if you’re fine. Like I told Monty, I’m in rigor mortis right now.”

Raven kept a weathered eye turned to her. Rich, chocolate eyes calculating everything Harper did. After Monty and Jasper left the two of them to go make-out under the guise of breaking into a chemistry lab, she and Raven found themselves traversing the stark white halls of the MIT Museum. Raven stopping to read every placard, to test out each project, to watch every video available. Harper happily ambling along behind her.

“You never asked about the brace,” Raven mumbled, the pair fiddling about with one of the projects. “You asked how Monty guilted me but never about the brace. Everyone asks about the brace.”

Especially after being locked in a car for several hours.

“Do you put out personal information on the second date?” Harper asked, her voice a whisper.

A watery smile found its way to Raven’s lips.

“I was supposed to go to MIT, but a stray bullet derailed that dream the summer before college. I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time of some drive-by.” Her finger glided over the buttons, analyzing the mechanics of the machine before them. “The money that should have gone to my tuition went towards my medical bills.”

And now she wandered about the halls of a museum taunting her with the very life she should have had. Without thinking Harper laced her fingers with Raven’s, her thumb rubbing gently against the soft skin of Raven’s pointer.

Letting out an inaudible snort, Raven glanced down at their interlocked hands. “Funny, I had been instructed to hold _your_ hand since Monty couldn’t. Not the other way around.”

Chuckling, Harper bumped her shoulder against her companion’s. "When we were five, he hugged Nurse Indra and then told her to hug me so she could pass the hug along. If anyone else had told her to do that, she would have laughed in their face.”

* * *

_Track: Hold On_

Drumming her fingers against the wheel, Harper quietly sang along to the road trip playlist. A constant stream of catchy pop songs from the 80s and 90s filtering through the radio. As the next song started, Raven let out a groan.

“This is the worst fucking playlist. Jasper is dead to me.”

“Are you hating on Wilson Phillips?! This song is a classic!”

Raven groaned once more. Harper knew behind the reflective glasses the other was glaring at her but she needn't care. Instead, she raised her voice. Singing along with the women of Wilson Phillips off-key. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, Harper mimed out the chorus with the other.

"This is the literal definition of torture."

"Hold on for one more day!" If she had been looking at Raven, Harper would have noticed the small smile on the other's lips.

* * *

_Track: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight)_

"I sent them a strongly worded text that if they fuck and I hear it, we're," Raven turned towards the door connecting their suite to Monty and Jasper, "going to have a problem!"

"You're not my real mom!" They heard Jasper's voice call through the door.

Raven rolled her eyes, walking further into the room where Harper stood beside the ironing board. Glancing quickly at the mirror atop the vanity, Harper's eyes widened. Messy blonde hair pulled in a knotty bun, her worn School House Rock shirt rumpled and the pair of sleep shorts had been through its fair share of washes. Boy was she a mess.

"What are you doing?"

"Ironing."

Raven tossed one of the pillows at her.

"I meant why are you ironing?"

"I had five minutes to pack. I literally grabbed handfuls of clothes and shoved them into bags. Everything I packed is wrinkled." Ironing gave her some sense of normalcy. That she could cover up the fact a majority of her life was spent caged inside the four walls of a hospital by having crisp, clean shirts. That by looking put together people would think she was.

The alarm on her phone blared loudly, an echo reaching through their connecting door. A reminder they needed to take their medicine. Even if they were on a road trip to forgo their problems, she and Monty still had a strict medicine regimen to follow. She lived her life guided by alarms and schedules. Tossing open her toiletry bag, she grabbed the color-coded monthly pillbox. She then grabbed the small clear plastic bag of her nebulizer.

“I’m gonna lock myself in the bathroom for a while with this,” she mumbled, waving the nebulizer bag back and forth, “so if you need to pee, I recommend you do it now.”

Sitting on the lid of the toilet, she opened up her Skype app, Monty’s face appearing on the screen in a position mirroring hers. Both counted down from three before putting the device into their mouths. When she returned into the room a little bit later, Raven lounged on one of the beds in a fluffy white robe, some trashy reality tv show playing in the background. A pile of different candies and chocolates littering the bedspread in front of her. Two milkshakes resting on the small bedside table in between the two queen-sized beds.

“Jasper and I may or may not have run across the street while you two were busy. He said milkshakes make the medication process better. But then again, milkshakes make anything better.”

“Milkshakes, candy, and trashy television. I _am_ being seduced.” Raven threw her head back into the pillow. She patted the space beside her, which Harper gladly took.

* * *

_Track: Holding Out for a Hero_

A hoarse cough ripped through her. Raven immediately closed the windows as the air quality shifted, the dust in the air affecting her lungs.

"I'd offer you my lungs, but you'd have to fight Monty for them. He's spry, he might be able to take you."

Removing one hand from the steering wheel, she swatted the other's thigh. "That was bad. Plus you'd have to be a donor."

"I am one." She hadn't been expecting that answer from Raven.

Turning to look at her companion, Raven shrugged. "When Monty first told me about having CF, I spent the night researching it. What the disease was, what treatments are available, how transplants work - all of it." Raven gripped onto the bottom of her brace. "I wanted to know what I could do to help him. The first thing I did was check off that little box."

Did Raven become an organ donor because of her love for Monty?

"Seeing as Jasper is more than willing to be a living donor for his boyfriend, I feel like I automatically win."

"Nah, he smokes too much." She hadn't known that part. Monty never said Jasper was a smoker.

The pair lapsed into silence for a moment. But it only took a moment for Harper to get caught up in her own head. Cystic fibrosis is the fucking worst. She spent every day living to die. Her name inching at a snail's pace up a list to obtain a set of lungs from someone who had passed on. Her father tore himself apart when the nurses said he couldn't be a living donor. And nurses forbade her favorite person in the world from entering her hospital room to prevent cross-contamination. Any and every infection leading to extending hospital stays. The constant feeling of isolation and she hated to use the abbreviation but the FOMO. Her best non-sick friend Miller was getting married in six months! She may never live long enough to find someone to marry!

Six days ago, she didn't think CF could get any worse but the bacteria in her lungs mutated and her name was promptly removed from the Mount Weather transplant list.

"Wanna know the worst fucking part of all this?" Harper asked, eyes trained on the taillights of the Jeep. "The worst fucking part is that I will never be able to hug my best friend. To comfort him when it all goes to shit. He needs a transplant and- and I can't even be close enough to hold his hand through all this.

"We've been friends since we were five years old. Hell, we dated for a year and a half! And never in all that time could I be close to him!"

Raven stayed quiet in the passenger seat. Thumb tracing the metal of her knee brace. Large brown eyes solemnly surveying Harper.

"And then when he finally gets a new pair of lungs, he'll probably need another transplant in three to five years because they worsen as time goes by!" Harper's voice rising in anguish.

She almost missed Raven's "I know," in reply.

Her vision began to blur, no longer able to see the road. Pulling over to the side, she rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Raven's hand came up to rub her back in soft, soothing circles. "Let it out."

Her body shook violently with each sob. Tears streaming down her cheeks. "I- I-" she tried to get the words out but nothing came out.

" _B. cepacia_. I have _B. cepacia._ "

"That's why you only mentioned Monty receiving a transplant."

Most transplant facilities removed patients with _B. cepacia_ from the list of proceptive receivers of a lung donation. Mount Weather Hospital being one of them.

"Monty doesn't know yet."

Undoing her seatbelt, Raven leaned across the divider to pull Harper into her. She cried into Raven's shoulders. Fingers digging at the other's sweatshirt. There were clinical trials and she could probably petition other transplant centers willing to take on a patient with Burkholderia cepacia but she would only continue living to die.

* * *

_Track: Lights_

They toured most of the continental U.S.

She got to climb to the top of the St. Louis Arch - not like Spiderman as ten-year-old Harper envisioned but still pretty rad. They got to see the world’s largest ball of yarn for the sheer fact they thought it didn’t exist. That is had been something people joked about in movies all the time. Turns out it’s real. Jasper got to go to New Orleans and try out their gumbo. Monty and Raven geeked out in the Johnson Space Center as well as the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. For two weeks they made weird pit stops in cities they’d otherwise never have visited.

Raven’s face changed when Jasper’s voice rang out over the phone's speaker explaining they wouldn’t be stopping in San Diego as originally intended, but a different city a few hours up the coast.

When Harper explained the meaning behind San Diego to Raven, the other laughed loudly. She and Monty when they were younger had hospital rooms across the hall from one another and when they would watch movies they’d leave their doors open. They would count one, two, three and yell ‘click’ to start the films together. It gave off the illusion of watching a movie with a friend. _Madagascar_ made them believe the San Diego Zoo resembled a jungle so naturally their younger selves added it to their future road trip.

“That’s actually really sad.”

“Shut up. We spent so long perfecting the one, two, three, click.”

San Francisco was Raven’s stop. The reason Monty guilted her into traveling cross country with them for two weeks. As they drove through the hilled city, Harper watched as Raven’s demeanor shifted. Knuckles turning white from gripping the steering wheel. Her front teeth pulling at her quivering bottom lip. As their group stood atop the Coit Tower overlooking the city, a small tear rolled down Raven’s cheek. Slipping her phone into her back pocket, Harper approached the other. Raven played with the end of her ponytail, her dark eyes far away. 

Did she rest a hand on Raven’s shoulder? Grab her hand again? But Raven made the decision for her. She reached out her hand, weaving their fingers together.

“My ex and I were supposed to move out here together. Silicon Valley’s about an hour away by car and this non-profit he applied to had a branch in San Francisco. But then everything went to shit.” The fingertips of the hand not holding Harper’s skimmed across the top of the brace.

Several people climbed up the final few steps to the top floor of the Coit Tower chatting amicably. Each unaware of Raven’s turmoil. To evade the crowd, Harper tugged their hands towards the exit. Monty and Jasper trailing behind them, engaged in a discussion about the Fortress of Solitude. 

Even while crammed inside the small elevator, Raven’s hand never left hers. Raven not letting go until they were tucked away once more into the front seats of the Impala.

"We were together for nine years. But after the incident, I closed myself off - I couldn't breathe. I stopped trying. And I blamed myself for not being enough for so long." Harper had fallen into the darkness before, multiple times. Blaming yourself for things beyond your control never ended well. She had a certain bracelet hidden deep in her purse to prove that.

"I struggled for air. He tried over and over for me to give therapy a try but the harder he pushed, the more I pulled away. I felt like I was suffocating. When he stopped trying to save us, when he found someone else, I felt I deserved every bit of what happened. That he cheated because I lost myself. And I found myself gasping."

"As someone who gasps for air every day of her life, the suffocation and the darkness, it's not your fault. And he's a piece of shit for cheating on you. I swear as hell wouldn't have."

Catharsis. San Francisco had been Monty giving his friend catharsis. For her leg. For her heart. For her life to move on.

"He's a shitty boyfriend, but he's a good person."

* * *

_Track: Never Gonna Give You Up_

Neither saw the SUV speeding through the light. Neither saw the SUV collide with a sedan. Neither saw the sedan fly over the median at them. At least, not until it was too late. Raven's right arm flung out to the side in a vain attempt to barricade Harper from harm. The Impala being forced onto its side from the impact.

Searing pain burning through her chest as the airbags deployed. The air forced from her lungs.

Beside her, Raven slumped to the side sandwiched between the airbag and her seat. A bead of blood trailing down from her forehead. The woman's lips moving faintly but whatever she whispered was drowned out by the ringing in Harper's ears. And Rick Astley. She heard Rick Astley.

The driver's side door flung open, Jasper's nervous hands frantically pawing at Raven's seatbelt. She heard Monty yelling something inaudible. Raven's bloodied hand reached out for hers. Her fingers unable to bend. "Fine. You'll be fine."

Harper opened her mouth to repeat those words back, but an image of that damned bracelet flashed in her mind. Do Not Resuscitate. She hoped no one would find the bracelet. It had been made during a low point in her life. The bracelet now driving her to do better. To live.

At least until, she received the news about having _B. cepacia._

"Monty gets my lungs." Raven muttered, her voice hoarse. "I already promised them to him."

"I don't want your lungs anyhow." Harper groaned, her temple pressing uncomfortably against the glass.

"You can have the heart instead."

"I don't need a new-"

Her heart?

"You're cute when you're not covered in blood."

Raven would live. Gripping Raven's hand tighter, Harper told her such. Telling the other how strong she was, how she survived a drive-by shooting, depression. How she'd survive a car accident. How she'd live.

She heard the ambulance in the distance. The alarms blaring faintly. Raven would live.

**Author's Note:**

> I struggled so much with this you don't understand.
> 
> Also Raven shows affection by holding hands since Harper never got to do that in her last (and only) relationship.


End file.
